Speed of Processing in Children With Specific Language Impairment

TLDR

The study aimed to investigate how quickly children with specific language impairment (SLI) respond across a range of tasks. Seventy‑seven third‑grade children completed 10 tasks covering 41 conditions, and a subgroup with nonspecific language impairment (NLI) was also included. Children with SLI responded more slowly than children with normal language on all tasks, a pattern also observed in NLI children but with greater slowing, confirming that SLI is generally associated with slower processing, although some SLI children did not show this deficit.

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the speed with which children with specific language impairment (SLI) respond on a range of tasks. Seventy-seven third-grade children participated in 10 different tasks (involving a total of 41 conditions), including nonlinguistic and linguistic activities. Mean response times RTs) of children with SLI ( n =29) increased as a function of mean RTs of children with normal language (NLD, n =29) under each of three different regression models; children with SLI responded more slowly across all task conditions, and also when linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks were analyzed separately. Children with nonspecific language impairment (NLI) were also included ( n =19). The results were similar to those for children with SLI, but the degree of slowing was greater. The results of the group analyses support the hypothesis that speed of processing in children with SLI is generally slower than that of children with normal language. However, some children with SLI do not appear to show deficits of this type.